The Dancers of Noyo (27 page)

             
"If we could get you loose from the fetch," I said to Franny, "we might be able to attach it to him."

             
"Uh-huh. But how are we to do that? We've already done everything we could think of." This was true. We had hacked at the cable with a knife, tied a ligature around it, and shot arrows at it. The fetch hadn't even been inconvenienced.

             
Franny sat down on the floor. She gave a deep sigh. "I wish my hands were untied," she said. "There's an itch on my left shoulder I'd like to scratch."

             
I was thinking. "Maybe we haven't tried the right kind of metal on the cable," I said finally.

             
"What
would
be the right kind of metal?" Franny asked. "A blade forged by a druid from a fallen asteroid? Something on the order of
La
Joyeuse
?
"
She closed her eyes wearily.

             
I didn't think she was showing a properly appreciative spirit. But the reference to a magical blade had reminded me of something I had read once, a reference to
a
kind of magic different from that taught me by
Pomo
Joe. I stood considering.

             
Then I went to the door. "I want you to untie my hands," I said in a semi-shout.

             
After an instant the door opened and Peace Symbol stood glowering at me. "What do you want your hands untied for?" he said.

             
"I think maybe I've found
a
way to get loose from the fetch," I answered.

             
"Unh?
Loose from the fetch? That's not what the Dancer wants."

             
"Well, it's the first step to attaching it to him," I said.

             
He rubbed his face. Glorious—a little younger than I; somehow I felt he hadn't been able to get next to any of the local girls, and that his failure was bothering him
—
and Aum were looking over his shoulder. "If I untie your hands," he said finally, "what'
ll
you do?"

             
"Well, I
'll
untie
her
hands." I indicated Franny, who was looking up at me quizzically. "Then she and I will prepare a knife so—at least I hope we will—so it'll be able to cut through the cable that connects her and the fetch."

             
Peace Symbol seemed to have
a
mind that worked pretty slowly. At last he said, "I can't do it. You might try to escape."

             
"Oh, go on, Peace Symbol," Glorious objected. "What could one man and a girl do even if he has got
a
knife? We took his bow away, and there are three of us. And the whole tribe is out in the street, watching."

             
"Yeah, maybe.
But
I'd
be responsible."

             
All the same, he grudgingly untied me, and watched while I released Francesca. I noticed that she lost no time in starting to scratch her itching
shoulderblade
.

             
"Well, you're loose." He was keeping a wary hand on his bow. "What comes next?"

             
"You'll have to leave us alone," I said.

             
"... Let's see the knife you're going to prepare."

             
I showed him. It was one of the paring knives from the kitchen in Franny's father's laboratory. The short blade seemed to reassure Peace Symbol, and he closed the door on us without any more argument. I thought Glorious, who was watching us with frank interest, looked disappointed.

             
This is not the place to describe the rite that Francesca and I performed. It is a way of making a blade sacred. It is quite different in method—though not, I think, in basic philosophy; all schemes of magic celebrate the same mystery—from the things I had learned from
Pomo
Joe.

             
When the rite was over, we put on our clothes again. The fetch drifted into the room, through the front of the hotel, and then floated out again. I went to the door. "Open up," I said. "I want you to take us to your Dancer."

             
"It took you quite a while," Peace Symbol observed. "Hey, you can't carry that knife in your hand. I guess we'd better tie you up again."

             
"Oh,
dreeze
," I said. "You'll just have to untie us when we get to the Dancer. I can't try to cut through the cable with my hands behind my back."

             
Peace Symbol listened to reason grudgingly—he did everything grudgingly—and we were marched across the street and down to the dance circle where the fake Dancer, whip in hand, was standing. Eight or ten listless striplings were stamping around in the usual circle; I couldn't help thinking that our Noyo boys would have come down considerably harder and raised a lot more dust. It's odd what things a person can find to be proud of.

             
"So you've thought of a way to transfer the fetch?" the Dancer greeted us. He had reapplied some of his body paint while we'd been in the hotel. He looked quite a lot smoother and glossier.

             
"I hope so," I said. "Anyhow, the first step is to detach it from her."

             
The tribesmen were beginning to gather. They obviously expected something pretty spectacular. And the fetch had come up and was looking at Franny with its usual idiotic expression of curiosity. It was dreadful to see how exactly it looked like her.

             
Knife in hand, I looked carefully along the ground to locate the ectoplasmic cable that linked Franny and the fetch. I hoped the cable would be in one of its material phases. It always materialized in time, but I didn't think the Jenner people would like having to wait.

             
I found it eventually. At the moment it was somewhat elongated, and about an inch in diameter. I knelt down by it. Franny was standing. The fetch had turned its back on us, and appeared to be looking at Aum.

             
I raised the knife. For a moment I seemed to look into a gulf, vertiginous and glassy-sided, of the future, where the years lay in colored terraces before me—an abysm of time that changed to a roaring funnel to a cataract. I said, in a voice I hardly recognized as my own, "I invoke the covenants." They were the same words I had used in Point Arena, when Franny had lain in the net.

             
The ectoplasmic cable rolled a little under the force of the blow. Then the point of the knife went home.

             
There was a cry from Franny and then a noise like the soft gush of liquid. I made a sawing motion with the paring knife. I had taken hold of the cable; it felt smooth and cool and rubbery, like a thick piece of seaweed, but the little paring knife cut through it easily. In a moment the knife had gone completely through. I felt the cable; it was completely severed. To the Dancer I said, "I've cut the cord. Take the fetch: It's yours."

             
"OK," he answered. "How do I make it work?"

             
I hadn't looked mentally much beyond the severing of the cable. I suppose I had had some notion of trying to hitch its end to the Jenner Dancer's solar plexus, which was where the cable had been attached to Franny when it was in its material state. But when I hunted for its end, I found the cable was getting shorter and shorter. It was deliquescing—dissolving—under my hand. There wasn't any question of the cable going into its immaterial phase; it was material enough, but it was melting into blackish drops while I held it. Meantime the fetch, looking considerably more translucent than it had, was standing near us, still regarding us with that idiotic expression of curiosity.

             
"Go on, make it work," said the fake Dancer, "and then show me."

             
The tribe moved restlessly. I began to sweat. I didn't know what to do next. I felt like a fool. The cable was now about eighteen inches long, and getting shorter every moment.

             
"Go on," said the pseudo-Dancer.
-

             
"... I can't."

             
"He didn't waste any time in argument
. "
Peace Symbol, you and Aum and Jeb take him and the girl back to the hotel. Take that knife away from him. Give them some lunch and let them go to the latrine first."

             
We were soon
back
in the small room. We hadn't been out of it much more than three-quarters of an hour.

             
Jeb was a lot older than Glorious had been, and a lot grumpier. I couldn't get any of our jailors to talk to me through the door. Finally I gave up. I looked at Franny. "Let's sit down," she said.

             
The hotel room must have been used as a jail for recalcitrant tribesmen; I found a square of folded-up matting in one corner, and spread it out on the floor. Franny and I sat down on it. I couldn't think of anything to do, fetch-wise, but I put my arm around her and began kissing her.

             
Imprisoned as we were, it was still an enormous relief to have the tie between Fran and the fetch severed.
Its.
presence
had weighed on us constantly, though we had tried to ignore it. The constraint imposed by the presence of three guards on the other side of the door was nothing compared to the
constraint
of having the fetch with us, and as Franny had said recently, once the cats had found the way to the creamery, they went there as often as they could. So we managed to do very well and were both grateful to the basket-maker who had made the matting so springy and thick.

             
It was getting dark when I woke. Franny opened her eyes, smiled, and then made a motion with her hand toward the door. I heard
Glorious's
voice.

             
"He told me to replace Peace Symbol," he was saying. "How should I know why he did it? And Aum can go to supper. The
door's
locked, and they can't possibly escape."

             
I sat up. Glorious, I thought, was far more sympathetic than Peace Symbol, and I began to wonder whether talking to him would help. Peace Symbol seemed to have left. Glorious and Jeb discussed dancing, fishing, deer hunting, the severing of the tie with the fetch, and girls. Glorious kept bringing the conversation around to g
ir
ls.

             
"Hello," I said through the door at last.

             
"Hello," Glorious answered. I thought he sounded really pleased. "You got anything worked out about the fetch yet?"

             
"No, not a thing."

             
"That's too bad." His regret sounded genuine, too. "Our Dancer's a stubborn man. If he said he wouldn't let you out until you got him a fetch, he won't
...
Say, why is it called a fetch?"

             
"I don't know. That's what my girl calls it."

             
"You
oughtn't
talk to him," Jeb said, disapproving.

             
"What's the harm in it?" Glorious answered. "I might find out something useful."